Film: The Bridge
Release date: 4th April 2011
Certificate: PG
Running time: 188 mins
Director: Bernhard Wicki
Starring: Folker Bohnet, Fritz Wepper, Michael Hinz, Frank Glaubrecht, Karl Michael Balzer
Genre: Drama/War
Studio: Digital Classics
Format: DVD
Country: West Germany
With the world engulfed in conflict yet again, The Bridge offers an opportunity to revisit a familiar war from a different perspective. Here, World War Two is depicted from the point of view of the German public as they face the prospect of invasion from a foreign conqueror. From a British perspective there are clear parallels with the Blitzkrieg bombings which affected our cities and led to evacuations into the countryside.
Reportedly based upon actual events, the film focuses on a small German town during the latter stages of the Second World War. With the Allies advancing through the country, the townsfolk are rapidly deserting for the relative safety of their families in the countryside.
As the Allies grow closer and closer the German army becomes increasingly desperate to defend its territory and subsequently recruits a number of teenage schoolchildren into its ranks.
Stationed on the titular bridge, the boys are eventually cut off from the rest of the armed forces and are left to defend the location alone. How will war look from the point of view of the Germans? How will it affect the youngsters who’ve been asked to grow up so quickly? And how far will the newly recruited boys go in their brave defence of their homeland?
The movie opens with a lightning fast introduction to vast numbers of characters. Skipping quickly from one scene to another, we are shown the band of boys together in school and separately with their families. It’s a little too much, too soon. With similar costumes, builds and haircuts, it’s actually difficult to discern which character is which and the rapid cutting between them leads to confusion.
Each boy is ascribed a brief back-story of their own and this goes on to provide some context for their actions later on. Missing fathers are an obvious motivator for their later actions, and for most of the boys matriarchal figures feature strongly - this gives some suggestion as to why the camaraderie of their gang is so important to them. Other facets of these biographies work less effectively. There’s some melodramatic and rather unbelievable romantic subplots – not least poor Karl (Karl Michael Balzer) who discovers his father ‘in flagrante’ with one of his employees – a revelation which elicits howls of anguish so over-the-top as to be comical.
The pace settles slightly as the boys get together to build a boat, drink booze they find and banter and bully each other in the way you’d expect them to. And it’s at the point that the group become easier to warm to that notifications begin to arrive of their conscription to military service. It doesn’t stop the overacting from the cast, but it does mark the beginning of the more effective act of the movie.
As the boys take leave of their parents (some more fondly than others) they begin a new, grown-up chapter of their lives. Suddenly earlier scenes with mice smuggled into the classroom make more sense as their childhood innocence quickly evaporates thanks to the realities of war. Placing the boys into their more juvenile context is annoying initially but provides a base-point by which to establish their emotional journey and does so very effectively - but not as effectively as the first sight of the boys in their military uniforms.
The brutalities of combat are emphasised brilliantly by a conversation about pulling a bayonet out of a victim’s guts, which shocks some of the teenaged participants. It’s a far more efficient way of conveying the harsh realities than the laboured scene of moralising which precedes it as a concerned third party argues that the war is futile and that the loss of young life is unacceptable. Actions speak louder than words here and this scene might well have been cut without diluting the message.
Fearing that the children will get hurt it is decided to put them out of harm’s way by leaving them guarding a bridge which has no strategic importance. It’s a move born of sympathy for them but turns out to be one which does nothing to protect them in the long run. After an unforeseen (and not entirely plausible) twist of fate, the boys are left guarding the bridge against attack from the Americans and are exposed to truckloads of injured and maimed German soldiers retreating from the frontline.
As might be expected from a film made in the 1950s, the action presented here is not entirely believable, as both the acting style and special effects look particularly dated. But the human drama of the tale itself is undiminished by the passage of time. Called to commit acts which they might never have countenanced asks enormous questions of the young protagonists as they face up to tragedy, loss and challenges to their idealism. This part of the film is far and away the strongest and gives a real sense of the hopelessness and futility of war.
The Bridge is a film which has not aged well. The passage of fifty years and a whole raft of superior war films have made this production seem extremely dated and old fashioned. That said, it’s interesting to see a familiar war from an unfamiliar point of view, and the mature conclusion might be reason enough to persist through the melodramatic acting and convoluted plot which precedes it. RW
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